Warrior

The poster for Warrior tells you most of what you need to know about the movie.  Two guys who appear to know their way around a hypodermic needle are going to fight.  One of them’s probably the bad guy, and one of them’s probably the good guy.  There’s gonna be a training montage, and someone’s going to look to a woman in the audience for inspiration.

For the most part, you’d be right.  Nevertheless, Warrior steps enough outside that mold to keep itself interesting, and it delivers a fine montage, great fights, and enough of an emotional wallop to choke me up at the end.  See, the fighters are brothers.  With issues.  They bond.  I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.

Yes, yes, yes.  We’ve seen a number of the story elements a million times.  And really, how do you do anything new with a shot of supporters back home cheering at their television sets?  But hey, I liked these people all the same.  I cared about them and I cared who won the big fight, and why, and how.  Warrior is a perfectly respectable entry in the “fight movie” catalogue.

Hulk

When the climax of your superhero movie comes down to two guys talking on a darkened stage, you know you have something special.

In The Hulk, Ang Lee has created a film that replicates the feeling of reading a comic book.  Its compositions deliberately recall the printed page.  Its wipes and transitions suggest the exuberance of a penciller in creative ecstasy.  Its villain kill qualifies among the top three villain kills of all time.

And yet, all that seems almost beside the point.  The Hulk is a film about emotions and their repression, and nothing engenders so much of both as family.  Bruce Banner’s family is about as dysfunctional as it gets, and he has coped with the ensuing trauma through repression and emotional distance.  As played by the extraordinary Eric Bana, he’s a coiled spring.  When he finally releases, when he lets go, it’s as chaotic and cathartic as an argument at Christmastime.

Ok, so hang on: is this a movie about an uptight guy who learns to get in touch with his emotions, or is it a movie about a giant green monster who breaks stuff?  I understand your confusion: I think audiences went in looking for the latter and felt similarly confused when confronted with the former.  But don’t get angry (I don’t think I’d like you when you’re angry): just dig The Hulk for what it is – a movie about an uptight guy who learns to get in touch with his emotions by turning into a giant green monster and breaking stuff.  By the time you get to those two guys on that darkened stage, you’ll have grooved on both tracks long enough to feel at home.  And when of those two guys literally starts chewing the scenery, you’ll be ready.

Tropic Thunder

I didn't so much as smile at any point in TROPIC THUNDER's run time. The whole enterprise felt like a labored, inside baseball comedy for the kind of people who laugh really hard at blooper reels. At no time did I feel like any of the characters were, on any level, actual people, and the child actor who played the villain was such a one-note performer that I found him to be quite distracting.

This film, a film that appeared to want to deflate vanities, felt like a vanity project. I don't ever need to see it again.